[1592] One Cigarette

Guest poem sent in by Deepak Srinivasan <Deepak.Srinivasan@>

No smoke without you, my fire.
After you left,
your cigarette glowed on in my ashtray
and sent up a long thread of such quiet grey
I smiled to wonder who would believe its signal
of so much love. One cigarette
in the non-smoker's tray.
As the last spire
trembles up, a sudden draught
blows it winding into my face.
Is it smell, is it taste?
You are here again, and I am drunk on your tobacco lips.
Out with the light.
Let the smoke lie back in the dark.
Till I hear the very ash
sigh down among the flowers of brass
I'll breathe, and long past midnight, your last kiss.

   -- Edwin Morgan

After reading your selection of Edwin Morgan's poetry (yet again) I continue to
be amazed by the simplicity of the work and yet the intense sense of feelings
that his poems seem to generate. This poem (I respectfully submit) stands among
them for its fineness in depiction of a different kind of nonsmoke without a
fire (in Faulkner speak).  It is good. Very good. From the first to the last.

Deepak



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